U2's Carnaval de Luz: Bono gets his mojo back

Detailed summary

It's an album of two halves from U2 but one which offers a sense of sanctuary and shining optimism. All this and Dolly Parton...

It's an album of two halves from U2 but one which offers a sense of sanctuary and shining optimism. All this and Dolly Parton...

U2 are seeking the "re-enchantment of the world" on their fifteenth album and their first in nearly a decade. It’s full of eulogies dressed up as rock 'n’ slogans, guitar belters, and tender ballads - all of course suffused with religiosity and spiritualism but mostly Carnaval de Luz aims to be the light and the way, a clarion call of hope in a weary world gone mad.

Or as Bono has it, "We made the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness, we better not be." Unlike the politically-fueled protest songs on the Days of Ash and Easter Lily EPs earlier this year, this is the sound of celebration. It’s also the album on which Bono gets his mojo back.

Produced once again by Jacknife Lee (along with EDM star Martin Garrix, Brian Eno and Ryan Tedder) and with Larry Mullen back behind his kit again, it’s the freshest and most immediate the band have sounded in an age. After a frankly extraordinary fifty years together, Carnaval de Luz is U2 reinvigorated, if not reinvented. They are also having a lot of fun.

We are at least in terra incognito on opening track Go (Carnival De Luz). It’s a curtain raiser - with Brian Eno pulling the strings - that starts like a long lost edit from Delia Derbyshire’s Radiophonic Workshop, with Doctor Who theme electronica giving way to Achtung Baby era guitars and a throwaway quality that sounds refreshing after the dourness of U2’s last few studio albums. La Reina, the band’s exaltation of their very own queen of the carnival, retools the guitars from Even Better Than The Real Thing and embraces a sense of unbridled drama, mess and mischief.

Naturally, there are clunkers and potholes along the way for this soon to be globetrotting carnival. Superficiality is a bit of a howler.

But this is an album of two halves, with the second side leaving the first for dust and from the…

Opening of the article, excerpted from RTÉ. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.